I've written before that baking brought me a sense of accomplishment when I felt I was losing any grip on my own life. In California, I lived in a house where I wasn't paying rent. I didn't love my boyfriend. I regretted going to law school. I slept for long hours when I was unemployed. I found no reason to do anything to pass the time. I tried my hand at running with Murphy (we only had Murphy at the time), but the California sun was hot and I was breathless from chainsmoking and skipping breakfast.

So I cooked. I baked. I read cookbooks and dog-eared library books. One influence on me was Laura Calder, who hosted a french cooking show on the Cooking Channel. I went through her whole series in a matter of days, having recorded them to watch later. And a dish that inspired me, to have me realize that French cuisine is more rustic than fussy, was her pommes anna, which I have adapted only slightly below.

Pommes Anna

Ingredients:

3 lbs potatoes, cleaned

1 cup heavy cream

3 TB unsalted butter, melted

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon flaked sea salt

2 TB thyme

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400*F

Cut out two rounds of parchment paper that fit a 12-inch cast iron skillet

Grease skillet and place one round onto the skillet

Whisk together heavy cream and butter

Thinly slice your potatoes and place into your heavy cream mixture

Arrange your potatoes in layers, sprinkling with a bit of salt, pepper, and thyme

Keep layering until you're out of potatoes

Now, place the second parchment round on top of the potatoes and press down gently

Weigh your potatoes down with a heavy pan or dutch oven to press all layers together while baking

Bake for 1 and a half hours or until tender in the middle and crisp on the edges

This Thanksgiving is the first year I won't be cooking in three years. I'm going to my sisters. To play with her baby and to make small talk with her in-laws. I like it there, no pretense and a lot of disruptions. We laugh. I take her elderly dog outside, then sit by a heater to keep my feet warm.

I like it there. I share a cigarette with her husband and I'm bringing a 12-pack with me. I know how it goes, she'll cook for four hours and we'll eat in 20. I'll help clean up, take a nap with Lana. I'll bring a side dish, the potatoes below. I'll make myself useful but stay out of the way. I'm still a voyeur in some senses of the word; watching the world I left four years ago and still trying to grow accustomed to it now. I hope I'm not too deer-legged in trying.

Hasselback Scalloped Potatoes

A better alternative to the boxed scalloped potatoes your mom has probably tried to doctor up with peas or ham. These are simple to make and nearly foolproof, yet still a fun play on a classic. My favorite kind of recipes these days.

Ingredients:

10 Yukon Gold potatoes, washed and dried

1 yellow onion, cut into chunks

6 cloves garlic

3 TB unsalted butter

3 TB flour

2 cup whole milk

1/2 cup cream cheese

2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/3 cup breadcrumbs

4 strips of bacon

Directions:

First, grease your pan with butter. Use a shallow casserole dish, such as the Falk pan pictured here

Preheat oven to 400*F

Next, using a sharp knife, cut your potatoes into thin slices, but not going all the way through the skin on the bottom, so they are held together by a brown tendon of flesh

Arrange your potatoes in your prepared pan, putting chunks of garlic and onion in between the spaces the potatoes have made

Now, in a saucepan, melt your butter on medium-high heat

Whisk in your flour and continue whisking until it is slightly browned and aromatic

Slowly add your milk in and continue whisking for a good minute, until the edges bubble and the sauce begins to thicken

Now, add your cream cheese and one and a half cups of your cheddar and continue whisking to melt them

Take off heat, whisk in your spices (to taste)

Pour over your potatoes. Do this slowly and completely smother them, fanning the potatoes to get in each slice

Top with remaining cheddar and breadcrumbs

Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour covered

While potatoes are baking, fry your bacon and cut into small "lardons"

After one hour, remove foil, top dish with bacon and continue to bake, uncovered, for an additional 15 minutes or until a fork can easily pierce the potatoes

I believe in second chances and the inevitable twentieth. I believe the proverbial inch has always been the mile. I believe in exhausting those chances and believe in finding reasons to renew them. I don’t believe in falling in love, but I believe in sticking it all out until you can’t stick it out no more.
You have to find a way to reinvent yourself and I have been reinvented over and over these last few months. I’ve been unemployed, a salesperson, and an administrative manager. I’ve been really shitty to myself, really shitty to others, and at times negligent of everything. Bills and housework, dogs and boyfriends. All my relationships kind of crumple when I don’t tend to them, they end up like flowers in the kitchen windowsill—swollen and hot, then brittle to the touch. But I’ve learned to brush the dust off my hands and work harder at the goals I have. And that is the Protestant work ethic. My reward will come from work, not by the grace of your God or mine, not by the outstretched hand of a friend or an acquaintance.

That work ethic has run deep and has presented itself in unlikely ways. It’s intravenous and liminal, static and electric. It’s down in my gut when I’m guilty of sitting on the couch too long and painstakingly obvious when I fall asleep with another To-Do list in the works. It will all make me a better person, every last drop of sweat. Every last missed opportunity. Every last night in and early mornings and missed vacation. It will all pay off, because you gain pride from the aceticism of owing someone else so much, too guilty to ever give yourself too much credit, buy yourself too many clothes, put a little back in your own bank account for that proverbial rainy day fund that disappears before that rain every dried up.

When everything is communal, you start to lay claims. And I thank whatever God that’s been bred into my consciousness that I can still hold onto that. And I owe it to my roots, the kinds that haven’t taken hold. The kinds that are telephonic and casual, the kind I can pick up or ignore at will. The kind that still live in Pennsylvania, Indiana. North Carolina and West Virginia. The kinds that inspired within me to be truthful of my intentions in this world and truthful to the person I’ve become.

My mother has arthritis at 43, deep in her clavicle. She said it came from working “hard jobs”. She’s been a janitor and a candy-maker, she worked in a deep-freeze at a Wal-Mart distribution center in eastern Kentucky once. She comes from a German stock; we’re all flat-boned and broad limbed. My dad never had to go to war, but he served our country just the same. My aunt has worked at the same factory for 15 years. My uncle drives trucks for a living and my sister makes coffee for truck drivers off an interstate near Maryland. They’re hard folk who eat hearty. They’re heavy folk who eat light in the summer until dusk and then they feed heavy. Meat and potatoes, biscuits and gravy. Dough fried in reserved bacon grease, informal dinners around the TV.

All this I recognized from my trip to North Carolina, all this I recognized in myself. And I can’t deny it any longer how my Midwestern values took root somewhere in my soul, and I can’t deny the satisfaction of having people like me exist in different circumstances that I could never see myself in. When everything is communal, I lay claims to my family and my pride in being from the salt of the earth.

And, in doing so, I have become so inspired by the every day. The roadside produce stands and the chainlink fence. The rope-tied dog that howls at the open moon and the crawdads you never knew could be eaten. The marriage of eating-this-because-we-have-a-coupon and eating-this-because-my-mother-made-it-this-way. Seeing beauty in that. Or how there are town-wide parades to celebrate the anniversary of my uncle who died in Afghanistan. Seeing beauty in the years of the hardworking middle-class that gave me my bone structure and reaping the benefits of those farmers and military men to move to California and willingly quit law school to find myself the hard way and know what it’s like to be really, truly poor for the first time ever and learning to cook because of necessity and not as a hobby.

The Protestant work ethic. The marriage of Southern tradition and Midwestern values. The sense of accomplishment at not losing my mind and finding a place in my family in June. It was all so holy to me. I didn’t know it was going to mean so much to me, but it was a pilgrimage, a Hajj, a Junrei of self-acceptance vis a vis familial acceptance. Where I was from, where I am going. Who I am. These are no longer existential cries of understanding, they are part of my here and now.

And in celebration of that knowledge, I cooked. I cooked with love, with honor and tradition. With understanding that these would be hearty ingredients, that the cast iron was necessary and not accessory. That the fatty dairy would have been pure, like how my grandmother Ruth would have made it straight from the cow (how maybe I would have, too, if my grandfather hadn’t sold the farm in the 70’s). I made this meal to honor every composite of myself. And it’s simple: meat, potatoes, and pie.

Steak and Buttermilk-Herbed Potatoes

This is a casual meal, thrown together without discretion for any kind of culinary know-how. Love it for what it is, for where it came from.

Ingredients:

For the Steak:

2 rib steaks, 6-10 oz

Olive oil

Cayenne pepper

Salt

Black Pepper

Garam masala

Paprika

Garlic salt

2 TB Butter, softened

For the potatoes

6-8 small to medium russet potatoes, sliced as thin as you can (do this before beginning cooking the meat. If need be, place in cold water to keep)

Brush with olive oil and rub in softened butter (the butter will give flavor, the olive oil will help to sear) and set aside, making sure to not wipe off the butter and oil.

Use two separate plates for the rub. On the first, pour the spices. I would say I used 1 1/2 TS - 1 TB per spice (be cognizant of the flavors, for obvious reasons. I used less salt, but knew the steak--and my tastebuds--could hold up to a more seasoned and spicy meat with garam masala and cayenne pepper). Combine with a fork.

Place oiled and buttered meats into spice plate and rub completely around. Place on reserved plate.

Heat skillet (definitely prefer cast-iron here, but make sure you have some ventilation for it). Use additional oil and butter until the pan starts to smoke a little to enhance the sear of the meat.

Put meat on skillet and let it sizzle. As a general rule, do not touch meat until it voluntarily allows itself to be pulled from the metal. Let it sear and cook for 3-4 minutes. Check readiness. Flip for additional 3-5 minutes, depending on how done you like your meat.

Reserve steak grease for use. Wrap in aluminum foil and let sit while you prepare the potatoes.

Directions for potatoes:

Place potatoes in bowl (dry them off as much as possible so the herbs and butter can stick).

Melt butter in small saucepan or microwave, pour over potatoes along with buttermilk

Add salt, garlic, and herbs

In the same skillet you cooked the steaks, add additional oil or butter and heat back up. Does not have to smoke-to-sear here.

Pour potatoes in and stir constantly until all edges are crisp and inside is softened. Some will be burnt and blackened, some will be soft and baked.

Allow to cool for a minute. Plate with steak. (Additionally, enjoy these with a little cheese while still hot, if desired).

Enjoy!

Buttermilk-lemon Pie

And finally, for you, I have a buttermilk-lemon pie that truly invoked my newfound love of the South. So pretty, so simple. So versatile. And did I mention pretty?

Ingredients:

A good quality store-bought pie crust (okay, okay, I cheated here a little)